Hollywood is using Chinese actors to promote films without casting them and it’s disgusting

Imagine the outrage in the West if instead of having minority characters, films hire minority actors as spokespeople to promote films about white men. That’s what they’re doing to the Chinese audience and it’s disgusting.

From Lu Han’s Star Wars promo to Li Yifeng’s Batman vs Superman to PG-One’s Spiderman: Homecoming and most recently to Wang Kai’s Blade Runner 2049, China’s biggest rising stars have been hired as “film ambassadors” or “spokespeople” in Hollywood films they will never be able to even be considered for.

Or if you’re Fan Bingbing, you get to be in one scene that only airs in China so Iron Man 3 can promote it as if it has a Chinese person in it. We’ll just cut you from every other version of the movie because god forbid the rest of the world have to see a Chinese actress on the screen.

Here’s a break-down of the flimsy excuses.

Excuse 1: Well, it’s a Hollywood film, why should they appeal to China?Why shouldn’t they? Why shouldn’t a fifth of the world population receive some sort of acknowledgement they exist, especially when they’ve become a growing portion of your viewers? Many of those films need China to make a profit and are being made because the Chinese market exists. James Cameron certainly isn’t making Avatar 2 3 4 5 just to drive Ryan Gosling mad.Plus, clearly Hollywood films acknowledge that they need more to appeal to the Chinese audience since they’re hiring local actors to promote them.

Excuse 2: Chinese actors aren’t good enough. They can’t speak English. They don’t want to act in Hollywood.Even Jackie Chan and Zhang Ziyi stopped filming in Hollywood because they simply weren’t being offered roles. Chloe Bennet is gorgeous, speaks perfect English, is a good actress, can even pass off as white, and she still couldn’t get roles with a Chinese last name.Hey, Michael Bay, China has plenty of beautiful people who can’t act, too!

17 thoughts on “Hollywood is using Chinese actors to promote films without casting them and it’s disgusting”

So I finally watched Blade Runner 2045. and the more I think about it the more angry I am at them

*spoiler alert*

The whole movie borrowed so much from Asian culture. The female lead, a robot whose actions are the embodiment of the male lead’s desires, even wears a cheongsam as she “invites” the male lead to have sex with her. Yet they couldn’t find the room for one Asian actor?????

Homeland of Hollywood, HoH, is anti-C.It’s not uncommon to have C-origin elements removed from C references and C people as much as possible. Tang-related J culture elements in Kyoto is considered beautiful, but HoH attributes that as 100% J. Despite Kyoto is modeled after Chang An in many ways. Dougong, nail-less constructions are common to both C and J. C and J sharing the same old scripts.
When Hollywood remade Infernal Affairs, they bizarrely credited the original film to J at the Oscar awards ceremony. The Director of the remake won Best Director. Siskel and Ebert’s website wrote exceedingly glowing review of the HoH’s Departed. At the same time, they said IA was confusing. Yet they said on the website how when they wrote the movie review for TD, they just cut and pasted the movie review from IA.
A lot of it is leftover from the Cold War. Even today, Comm vs Capitalistic psych war wages on under the calm surface. In HoH eyes, it’s all cartoonishly black and white. If you’re C in any way, you’re the former. It’s very uncomfortable for C’s living in many parts of the world. From criminal crimes to job discrimination or bamboo ceiling issues. Possibly college admissions too.
Even worse than that was the deliberate burying of foreign news for decades regarding past major C-related casualties. (That sort of crimes against humanity went on for decades after that with little news coverage and fell under the news radar. Despite the high sample sizes). It only started getting the slightest bit of attention in select circle after Joshua Oppenheimer’s movie was shown in select screens in the West.This is per NY times’ online news on 18 Octobe 2017. A lot of Asians commented how differently this would have played out had it been non or less C-related.
Sadly, one’s voice in the world is proportional to your ethnic group’s GDP and consumption power. How many world billionaires in your ethnic group vs the majority. How remote your home region’s economic status and label are from the officially, widely accepted Capitalistic label. I can now see why some C’s work so hard for money. Why there are so many Asian tiger moms. There are extra barriers like bamboo ceilings and cultural barriers for people of certain skin color.

Because movies already have celebrities. It’s sending the message that the film actors aren’t good enough to sell the film, but also that the spokesperson isn’t good enough to be in the movie.

It’s pretty clear that Hollywood is unwilling to hire Asians in general, so the fact that they recognize they need more Asian star power but will go out of the way to avoid casting one and saving themselves a spokesperson fee is even more gross.

I’m glad more people are realizing Hollywood’s hypocrisy and double standards.
Hollywood wants Chinese money but they don’t want to give Chinese/Asian actors a fair shake.

Also whenever an Asian actor does get a role, it’s mostly a one dimensional stereotype (i.e. kung fu, nerd, etc.) or a token side kick. We are rarely shown as humanized characters.

Lastly, I’m very thankful for this blog. It helps me find out the latest tv shows and movies. I already gave up on Hollywood movies and would rather watch Asian TV shows/movies where Asians are portrayed as multidimensional characters.

Whoa. If this were a series of internet-famous people/fans featured in social media campaigns, I’d call it fair play, But this is a little off-putting. I’d protest by not seeing these films, but I haven’t watched anything put out by Hollywood in at least a quarter century, anyway.

I admit I’m disappointed in the actors involved, just a bit. But only a bit. I mean, a job’s a job, I suppose. Each individual actor can’t have predicted the overall trend, and it’s the trend that reeks.

Agreed. I wish the Chinese entertainment industry would ignore Hollywood and just concentrate on doing and promoting their own thing.

I’m honestly disappointed that they spend money on hiring popular foreign actors to star in their own movies and TV shows when clearly, Hollywood doesn’t repay their favour. Hiring Chinese actors as “film ambassadors” and minor roles doesn’t count.

That’s because of THADD, though.
Up until then, China hired Korean actors and production teams all the time for domestic audience consumption. And the Chinese production companies weren’t even trying to warn Korean money. Korean actors have been on record saying they film in China to make easy money.
Ex. : Zhang Han has filmed five dramas with leading Korean actresses, ranging from ancient to modern to Republican. You can probably count on one hand the number of actors of Chinese descent who’s played leading roles that aren’t specifically written for an Asian.

Plus, China is a developing market, so it can reasonably claim it hasn’t matured enough to allow perfect competition.

Korean actors have been starring in Chinese films since the first golden age of Chinese cinema in the 1930s. Jin Yan was born in Seoul, but made his career in Shanghai, becoming one of the most famous actors of his era in China.

Hong Kong wuxia movies of the 60s and 70s also featured Korean actors, including Shin Yeong-gyun who played King Zhou in Last Woman of Shang.

Partly because of the influence of Cantonese in Hong Kong cinema, Chinese audiences, I think, are accustomed to dubbed voices, and it’s not unusual for non-Chinese actors to play Chinese roles even if they can’t speak the language. It’s generally accepted that you can be looking at Siwon’s face, but somehow hearing Takeshi Kaneshiro’s voice.

I can’t see the opposite happening in Korea, where a major Korean historical figure is played by a Chinese actor who can’t speak Korean.

Chinese entertainment market was banking on Hallyu craze in China.
K-ent was seriously banking on the Chinese money. Plenty of promotions and reality shows featured K-ent celebrities. I accidentally ran into a few cdramas having Korean leads. Voice dubbing helped somewhat, but still looked off.

Due to Chinese government’s snit over THADD, both Ji Chang Wook’s My Male God and Park Ming Young’s The Braveness of Ming are indefinitely shelved. In order for The Legendary Tycoon to air, lead actress PMY’s scenes were edited out and replaced. These are just the projects I happened to follow. I’m sure there are more.

I’ve also seen white/caucasian actors/actresses in at least 3 cdramas. Their roles were all important with the characters given due respect.